As the Snake Sheds its Skin: The Revolutionary Art and Science of Alexander Bogdanov

Abstract

This dissertation presents the life and work of Alexander Bogdanov, a revolutionary public intellectual in Russia at the turn of the twentieth century. I begin with Bogdanov’s living experience, situating his theoretical interventions in the political and intellectual context of his time. Then I introduce Bogdanov’s unique Marxist approach to systems science, or “tektology,” which Bogdanov thought of as a new “organizational point of view” that would synthesize all historical knowledge and create theoretical tools for revolutionary transformation of human social systems. In particular, I look at how Bogdanov applied systems science to questions of communication and culture, including his labor theory of speech, his structural-analogical model of base and superstructure correlations, and his grand narrative of progressive development from authoritarianism through anarchy and into socialism. Lastly, I offer a close reading of Bogdanov’s lesser-known science fiction novel Engineer Menni, which Bogdanov presented as an analogy to the situation faced by socialists in the epoch of monopoly capitalism, and which offers insights into the characteristics of Bogdanov’s distinctive cultural and political theory of social change.